


Behind the Mask

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4708580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Piper reflects on the events that brought her to Lakewood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind the Mask

It was so easy. No one even seemed to have suspected.

There she went, little miss Emma Duval, golden girl, part of the popular crowd, daughter of a local hero, the one their mother had kept. There had been none of that for Piper. Growing up the class outcast, surrounded by taunts wherever she went about how her birth parents hadn’t wanted her, but tolerating it without complaint because she knew she would face worse if anyone ever found out that she was the child of the masked killer Brandon James.

But no more. She’d spent so many years secretly keeping track of her family and planning her next move, watching as her half-sister grew up raised by their mother, started dating one of the most popular boys in the school, joined the in-crowd, had the life that could never have been Piper’s. Okay, so hero of the hour Kevin Duval didn’t appear to be the most attentive of fathers, but boo fricking hoo. At least Emma still had her father. Piper was never going to get to know hers.

Piper hadn’t known quite what to expect when she first met her birth family. For some crazy reason she had wondered whether there would be any sense of recognition, like in all the fluff pieces about siblings being separated at birth that she’d had to do at the start of her career. Even back then she’d thought they were all horseshit, and her instincts were proved right when Daisy Duval had looked right through her. Although maybe it helped that by that time she’d built up a reputation for herself with her podcasts, biding her time until she was able to position herself in Lakewood, and when Emma looked at her it was Piper Shaw the podcast star that she saw.

And she walked among them, accepted Noah’s admiration with a smile as she questioned Audrey about Nina, knowing all the time that no one suspected her. When Emma first suggested to Piper that she stick around for a while, for a moment Piper imagined what it could have been like if she had gone to Emma as her sister and that Emma was asking her to stick around so that they could get to know each other. Then she pushed it from her mind. It would never have happened that way, and she was best not to think about it. She would continue as planned.

It was surprising to her at first how you could say just about anything and people would accept it as fact. Piper had tried it before now in her podcasts, she’d broadcast something incorrect about some serial killer from England and next thing she knew people were commenting to her claiming to have known all about it. She’d tried it again, and none of it was ever challenged. So when she referred to Daisy having given birth to a son, it didn’t come as a surprise by that time that people were accepting that as fact and didn’t even question how she could have been so sure of the sex when it hadn’t been public knowledge at the time that a child of Brandon James had even been born at all, it was too early to tell on the ultrasound she had seen and not only that, even Emma had accepted it without question despite having been told that Daisy hadn’t even known the sex herself. So with everyone convinced that Daisy and Brandon’s child had been a boy, it was easy enough for Piper to avoid suspicion.

 

She’d known about her grandmother’s dementia before she ever met her, and at first Piper had thought that it would make it so much easier to manipulate her. She could feed her some story, show her some photos, the woman would say anything. Hell, Piper could have shown her a photograph of the President and she would probably have identified him as having turned up claiming to be her grandson.

Once she’d actually seen her, Piper did have some second thoughts. Could she really do that to her grandmother, seeing the state she was in? Then she decided she had to go through with it. It had to be this way in order that Piper was never suspected. Besides, what had her grandmother ever done for her? Piper had never been sure whether her grandmother had known of her existence before, but it would have been possible to find out, she was sure, and her grandmother could have stepped in to care for Piper instead of allowing her to be adopted.

All it had taken was a few leading comments and her grandmother was quite ready to believe that Brandon had had a son, and Emma was equally ready to believe that she had identified Kieran. The kid had come in useful to her these last few weeks, having his own grudge against the Duvals owing to his mother’s belief that his father had been having an affair with Daisy becoming the final nail in the coffin for his parents’ marriage. Course, it hadn’t even been the case at the time, but once they ended up getting together for real, it had just fuelled his anger. But Kieran still didn’t know that it had never been true, and Piper wasn’t going to be the one to disillusion him. He’d been a great help to her with Nina and Tyler’s murders allowing her a legitimate reason to be in Lakewood, and with Pretty-Boy Belmont, allowing her to appear to be one of the victims herself while she managed to escape with barely a bump. And he was going to be an even bigger help to her as her scapegoat. Faced with her grandmother’s testimony, Kieran was going to be named as the killer, Piper would be able to escape, and Brandon James would be avenged. Her work here was done.


End file.
